I don't know what everyone's definition of patriotism is, and what do you think as a Chinese, what should you do for your motherland, and what kind of words and deeds meet the standard of patriotism? Today, we want to talk about such a Chinese who has a certain reputation at home and abroad in modern times and prides himself on being very patriotic. He is Mr. Ongwango.
The Weng family has loved the collection of cultural relics and paintings for six generations, and several generations have dedicated themselves to guarding the treasures in the family. The most prominent time of the Weng family should be the Weng Tonggong period more than 150 years ago, when four dynasties were experienced, and three dynasties were officials, and two were emperors. Weng Tonggong is the favorite person in our eyes, only 26 years old when he was a high school champion, and since then, he has become a big figure in the DPRK and China in only a few years. It is precisely because of this status and influence that the Weng family's long road of family collection protection will begin.
As a rising star, Weng Wange, although not the direct grandson of Weng Tonggong, is also the most outstanding child in the collateral lineage, and has undertaken the responsibility of guarding the family's collection since the age of two. After more than 90 years, completely in a posture of pushing the back wave of the Yangtze River forward, it set many glories such as calligraphers, poets, artists, photographers, directors, Chinese social activists, and ambassadors for the promotion of Chinese culture, and quite inherited the style of his grandfather Weng Tonggong who was then the prime minister and minister of state affairs, and since he studied in his twenties and settled in the United States, he has been wandering between countries to promote Chinese culture.
It is such an excellent old man with strong patriotic feelings, but on his centenary birthday, he made a move that shocked Chinese, and he donated most of the precious collections of the six generations of his family, including calligraphy and paintings, posters, rubbings and embroidery, including 183 cultural relics of immeasurable value across more than a thousand years of history, completely free of charge to the Boston Museum of Art in the United States. It has become the museum with the most Chinese cultural relics in foreign countries.
Even before that, Mr. Weng Wange spent seven months on the incomparably precious Qing Dynasty calligraphy and painting Master Wang Cui, and the 16-meter-long painstaking work "Ten Thousand Miles of the Yangtze River" was also generously donated to this museum.
And this incident actually happened on July 28, US time last year. It was Mr. Ongwango's 100th birthday, and his birthday party was also very interesting to be held by the Boston Museum. After this decision was announced, it immediately aroused the anger of countless Chinese at home and abroad, even if these cultural relics are all in the Weng family's collection, there is no reason to raise their hands to give to outsiders. Not to mention that Mr. Weng Wango has done one thing before, and the comparison between the two is even more incomprehensible and acceptable.
It turned out that in 2004, Mr. Weng Wange gave up his family's collection of 542 volumes totaling more than 80 kinds of rare and ancient books from the Song Dynasty to the Shanghai Library at a super low price of only 4.5 million US dollars. This won him a reputation at the time, and it was precisely because of this that more Chinese realized that this Chinese who had settled abroad for a long time had always been concerned about the motherland.
The huge difference between the two actions before and after is indeed difficult for countless Chinese people to accept. Even if you don't donate cultural relics to the state, you can't give them to outsiders without taking anything. And we learned that Mr. Onwango had actually donated dozens of artifacts to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the previous decades, and had long funded the museum. In mr. Weng Lao's words, this was the first museum he came into contact with after coming to the United States, and he trusted and assured that the treasures of these families would be entrusted to them for protection.
In the face of countless insults and accusations and anger from the Chinese people, Mr. Weng Lao seems to be unmoved, he believes that culture and history have no borders, and he only does what he thinks is right when he still has the ability. After all, in addition to the more than 500 good books he had sold to the Shanghai Museum earlier, he had also donated to Peking University the "Spoon Garden Zen Map" and "Spoon Garden Zen Map" painted by Wu Bin in the Ming Dynasty, donated the manuscript of "Weng Tonggong's Diary" and the manuscript of "Weng's Literature Series" to the Shanghai Museum, the Southern Song Dynasty painter Liang Kai's "Daojun Statue", "Lindaijin Xie'an Dongshan Map", the Qing Dynasty painter Wang Yuanqi's "Du Fu Poetic Painting Giant Axis", and even donated the former residence of the ancestor Weng Tonggong.
Mr. Weng Lao believes that his family treasures are too precious, and after a hundred years, the most important thing he needs to consider is how to place them, which is the most appropriate. In his consideration, he no longer had the ability to continue to guard these precious cultural relics, so he had to find a person who had the ability to guard them. And the Boston Museum, which he has the most contact with, the most understanding, and the most trusted museum, in an unbiased case, he divided some of the cultural relics or sold or donated back to China, and the rest, put here, he thinks there is no problem.
In the 70 or 80 years that he has lived in the United States, he has been committed to promoting the exchange of Chinese and American cultures, and he has also been very careful to promote Chinese culture. In Mr. Weng's cognition, culture has no borders, but after he donated these cultural relics to the Boston Museum, is it not more conducive to foreign friends to understand our Chinese culture and history? There is no such thing as forgetting the country, this is just a very common thing, and it cannot rise to that height.
And he believes that the Boston Museum is indeed more capable of protecting these artifacts than most museums in the country, and he is right to do so for the sake of the cultural relics themselves. Just like why most of the cultural relics donated to China are only for the Shanghai Museum, the various software and hardware facilities of the Shanghai Museum are qualified, so that he can be assured of delivery and deserve his trust.
After these several donations to museums at home and abroad, Mr. Weng's own family collection has been very small, perhaps some will be left to future generations, or perhaps he will slowly donate all of it. The artifacts he donated to the Boston Museum last year are expected to be exhibited this fall. Regardless of whether Mr. Weng's decision is correct or not, as outsiders, we really can't over-evaluate it.
But as the guardian and owner of these precious cultural relics, he naturally has the right to arrange their destination, and the sacrifices made by the six generations of the Weng family for these cultural relics are great and worthy of our respect. In fact, from another point of view, as long as these cultural relics can be properly preserved, whether they are placed at home or abroad should not mind.
When the motherland is stronger and more powerful and unstoppable, all kinds of cultural relics that have been exiled abroad will always be taken back by us passively or actively, everything, but because we are not strong enough now.